Nova: The Human Rocket
by AerodynamicZ
Summary: A reboot of the 2013 Nova comic. If a race dies in space, and there's nobody there to hear it, did they scream? Sam Alexander, amateur astronomist, comes to the realization that the universe is left undefended now that Nova Prime and Star-Lord have disappeared. He sets forth on his quest to do his part in their absence. "My name is Sam Alexander, and I hear your screams."


8X8 Distress

It's a simple phrase. It's got a simple meaning. The SETI Institute started picking them up a few years back, and as far as they can tell, it just means one thing.

Help. Officially, it signifies a threat that would destroy the entire planet without help, but at its core, it just means 'Help'.

A cry for help, but to who? Who could possibly respond to a distress signal in space? This was a question that went unanswered for a great many years until he came. I was just a kid when it started and ended, but I've seen the videos, I've read the articles.

Nova was the one who responded to the 8X8 Distress signals.

But recently, he hasn't.

Every day after school, I'd do my best to get home as fast as possible, toss on my ham radio headset, and listen in to SETI's ingoing and outgoing streams. Within minutes of there being an '8X8 Distress' followed by something along the lines of 'Planetary Collapse' or 'Galactus Incoming', there'd be a deep, reassuring voice.

"This is Nova Prime. I am responding."

Honestly, it was cool as hell. There were hundreds of 8X8s in a single day, and he never faltered in answering each and every single one personally.

Until one day, I didn't hear his voice. I waited all day and all night, and I checked the next day after school, and every day that week, and the next week too. 2 months passed before I realized, that he wouldn't be responding to any more 8X8s.

I felt like a whole world had died, and nobody noticed or cared. Becuase nobody did, and because a world with an unanswered 8X8 probably would die. There was a whole universe out there, missing it's only protector, falling apart while Earth, a planet teeming with heroes, hogged them all to herself. I sent around 20 letters to the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the like, and never received a response. Like those people in deep space.

If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody's around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If a people die in space, and nobody's around to hear it, did they still scream?

Yes.

My name is Sam Alexander, and I hear your screams.

 ** _Prologue_**

So here I am, standing 30 feet away from a practically collapsed bunker. The front door is barely open, rusted in place. Today I take the first steps towards doing something for the world, no, the universe.

"This is a terrible idea..." I tell myself inching closer to the doorway. In all fairness, it is a terrible idea. This collapsed bunker is one of Iron Man's older, abandoned Armories. He had them all over the world, and he put one down in Arizona of all places. I just hope the security is offline, or this whole plan is busted and I'll get swiss cheesed by laser drones. Another few steps take me inside the bunker. The lack of blaring sirens does nothing to make me feel better since I have no way of knowing whether or not this place has silent alarms. My flashlight flickers to life as I shake it vigorously, and aim it around me.

"Whoa..."

The halls in front of me are lined with armors, 20 on each side, each one unique, each one rusted and forgotten. To my left, there's a switch, probably for the lights, hopefully not for the security. I flick it, and the lights stutter to life, illuminating the room. I run to the work table, and toss my backpack on top. Inside are all the materials I could afford for this project. That is to say, not much. I probably don't have long before Mr. Stark realizes the literal gold mine he's left here, and so I should get to work as soon as possible. I take the crowbar out of my backpack and go over to the nearest armor. It looks pretty old, but I'm not after the regular old tech inside. I'm after the Arc Reactor.

Okay. Stick to the plan. 3 Arc Reactors.

Using the crowbar, I pry open the chest plate of the first armor, and as if on cue, the Arc Reactor pops out, as if the chest plate was the only thing keeping it in.It glows in my hands, still whirring internally. Despite being abandoned all these years, it's still kept on chugging, reacting. It goes onto the worktable, along with the next three which come out of their armors in likewise fashion.

What Tony Stark never did with his Armors, was wire his Arc Reactors in series. He always did it in parallel, because the resulting charge from a series connection to an Arc Reactor would fry his fancy super-computers. For this reason, he usually only has one reactor in an armor. Iron Man can break Mach 65 with just one. The fastest fighter jet in the world is barely scratching Mach 7. Using 3 cores will put me at around Mach 200, 1/4370th of the speed of light. Faster than almost any other human before me. It's still not fast enough to facilitate reasonably fast space travel, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. First things first, getting into the air.

I spend a few more minutes taking joint servos out of the armors since it couldn't hurt to have some more power behind my punches. All this stuff is technically supposed to be really advanced, but in all honesty, Stark made most of this stuff really early in his career. Aside from the Arc Reactors, there are dozens of guides and videos on how to mess with this stuff, there have been for years now. Got a laptop with all the videos I'll need downloaded already. I lay the take out on the worktable, aside from the materials I had. An insulated wetsuit, a rebreather, a sealed facemask, a cheap Nova cosplay helmet, a pair of headphones and some microcontroller parts, and some binding materials, rivets, bolts, nuts, and the like. Everything else should be here.

4 hours pass, and at the end of it, I've managed to fit the servos into the wetsuit from the inside, created a small pressure seal between the neck and the facemask, which I combined with the rebreather. The whole thing was covered with the cosplay helmet which I had built a small radio into. Everything was powered using a small transformer coil at the base of my neck, hooked to the 3 arc reactors nested in the chest of my new costume, protruding out a bit since I wasn't about to make 3 holes in my chest to accommodate. The reactors were also hooked to analog controls in the gloves, connecting them to the jets in my boots and hands. 4 buttons on each hand, in positions where they were easy to reach, but hard to accidentally press. The microcontroller went behind a slot in my belt hooked into some sensors on my legs and arms, for more precise and hands-free controls.

All in all, it's a pretty well patched-together work of engineering. I mean, the whole thing is stolen tech, and it wouldn't even be possible without like 20 youtube videos, but otherwise, it's all mine.

I suit up, and toss my backpack over my shoulder, and run as fast as I can to get away from the bunker. Once I'm far enough away, I fall on my back, and roll around in the dirt. I look up at the sky, and then back down at myself. I'm breathing hard, but I don't care. Just to check, I point my legs out, and glide my thumbs over the buttons on each of my gloves. It's loud, when the jets kick up. But they work, and I can feel myself being pushed along the ground, and then up into the air. It's a bit unsteady, since all the controls are manual and analog, without any digital corrections or anything like that. It's very smooth, almost too smooth, like it's made out of oil, but that's what I get for going analog. But I'm up. I'm in the air. I can check that off my 'How to be Nova' checklist. Flying.

I did it. I took the first steps. From here on out, I'm gonna be the best Nova that I can.

 ** _Issue 1_**

 ** _Two Weeks Later._**

If I'm gonna be a big intergalactic hero, first I'll need to be at least a mediocre one-planet hero. And to do that, I need to at least be a mediocre one-town hero. So here I am, getting my ass handed to me by what the news had called a C-lister. This is embarrassing.

Diamondhead roared at me as he threw another car under me, forcing me to roll behind a street corner, my heart pounding out of my chest.

"Heh! You're just a kid, ain'tcha? I'll admit, you had me worried for a sec there, with the shiny gold dome, but you ain't even half a Nova!"

Why did I think this was a good idea!?

Diamondhead stomped closer to the corner where I was hiding, and I found myself frozen with fear. I knew I couldn't keep running, or this would spread outside of the police perimeter.

Oh man, the cops... They're gonna think I'm such a loser. They cleared the area because they thought I could handle this, and with the time I've wasted they could've gotten a SWAT team or SHIELD or something to deal with-

"Argh!" I yelled as he pulled me out from my hide space.

"I didn't get a chance to kill the first one, but I bet he'd be mighty pissed I killed his boy!"

With one hand gripping my helmet tightly, he dragged me to one of the last un-thrown cars on the block. He thrust his diamond hand into the gas tank and yanked the tank out violently. He started pouring out the contents over my head, covering my body with the toxic substance.

"I'm... not his... son!" I managed to choke out in between breaths as I struggled to escape his grasp, to no avail. Diamondhead wasn't listening.

"I'm gonna wear your charred helm as a trophy!"

Charred!?

Once the tank was empty, he pulled me to brick wall of the bank that he had just robbed. He smashed my head against the brick. It hurt, but the helmet took most of the damage. The diamond-clad maniac started scraping my head against the brick surface, which confused me until I saw sparks start to fly from the top of my helmet.

He was trying to set me on fire.

He saw the look in my eyes, and chuckled. He knew that I knew. "It's fitting that the Human Rocket die in flames, right?"

"No! It's not! Argh!"

In desperation, I started to whale at his midsection with my gloved fists. He just laughed and continued scraping.

"C'mon, light you scrawny matchstick..."

And I did.

For the first time in my life, I was truly afraid. I was afraid I was going to die, that my whole mission would be in vain, and that everyone I had sworn to help wouldn't ever get that help.

No. Not like this.

It takes 5 seconds for a fire to spread 1.5 meters over gasoline. I had felt the spark fall from my helm and start the fire somewhere on my shin, and I've already wasted about 2 seconds watching my own life ignite before my own eyes. I've got 3 seconds to get from here to space before the fire melts my facemask and compromises the air supply. I jam my thumbs into the flight buttons on the outside of my hand, and almost instantly shoot up into the air, with my arms wrapped around Diamondhead. It's 100 kilometers to get to space.

I fly at 75 kilometers per second.

I make into space just as the fire crawls up my neck before being extinguished. I let go of Diamondhead. He doesn't seem to be having a problem with the pressure or the lack of air or the cold, so I know he can take just as much of a beating as he can dish out. Since he can't fly or maneuver in space, I hover behind him, out of his reach, and knock him back down to earth with a mighty smash. I watch as he descends back towards earth at blinding speed, and I follow him back down. Using him as a shield against the flame cone, pummeling him all the way down, I smile to myself.

This won't be so bad after all. I got this.

We impact the street, cratering it instantly. Standing up, I press my foot onto his chest. He's out like a light, and ready to be detained. I drag him out of the hole and to the edge of the police perimeter.

"See? Toldja that I could take care of this guy!" I said confidently, tossing him in front of the cops. They're all gathered behind the barricade, slowly rising from their spots. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought they thought I just might not make it.

"Hey kid, are you okay? You look... Well-done." said one cop, the first to speak since I had left them to deal with Diamondhead in the first place.

They looked at me, almost horrified. I hadn't taken into account how bad I looked. The fire had charred the top layer of the suit, and even though it was still intact, it looked like I had been burned alive from the outside.

"Oh, this? This is nothing, really."That was a lie. It was a lot. I'd probably have to replace the entire layer. Fuck, that'd cost like, 50 bucks on Cosplay dot com. "You guys should really, uh, cuff him, or something. Later."

I up-up-and-away-ed out of there, boosting back up into the sky above to avoid any more awkward conversation.

Maybe I should check up on Carrie? What's the point of superheroics if you can't play favorites every now and then?

Carrie's a girl, from my classes.

That's a lie. She's just in my grade. We don't share a lot of classes this year. We don't exactly talk often, either. But we did meet eyes. That one time. She gave me her number for that project we did together, last year. Should I call? I think to myself, hovering in circles.

Ugh, she probably thinks that I'm a total creep.

Eh, fuck it. I open up my fanny pack and dig around for my phone. Pulling it out victoriously, I scroll down past the contact info of my 3 friends and my mother, to the bottom of the list.

Carrie. 1 call(s) in call log, says the readout on the screen.

"Here goes nothing," I mutter to myself, hitting call with my gloved thumb. I place it to my ear and it rings steadily for about two seconds.

"Sam-"

I hang up before she can finish saying my name.

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! What else did you think was gonna happen?

Oh, man. She knows it was me! She saved my number! Yes!

No! Oh, no! She knows it was me! She'll probably think I'm a creep who makes crank calls to girls and-

Rrrrrriiiiiinnnng.Rrrrrriiiiiinnnng.

Oh, Christ, she's calling back! What do I do, what do I do!?

Hesitantly, I decided to pick up the call.

"hey there carrie" I blurt out at a barely audible volume.

"Sam, is that you? You sound weird."

Realizing that I still have the mask and helmet on, I descend to a lower altitude where the oxygen is breathable and lift it off.

"Oh, yeah, sorry about that. Soooo, Carrie."

"Yes?"

"How's the weather?"

I can hear her sigh exasperatedly over the phone. I'm such an idiot, I think to myself, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

"Look, Sam, I know why you're calling."

Oh shit.

"You do?" I squeak out, trying to play it off.

"Of course. You were absent in Physics today, remember? Drop by my house and pick up the notes."

Oh yeah. I skipped Physics to go out and deal with Diamondhead. But more importantly, she just invited me to her house!

I gulp down a large amount of empty air. "Uh, Carrie?"

"Yes?"

"I have never been to your house before."

"Oh, yeah. I'll text you my address. Drop by before 5. My dad doesn't like boys visiting late, and he might get the wrong idea."

My face flushed a deep red. "What idea?"

"You know, that we're in cahoots of the romantic variety, Sam." she said nonchalantly.

Gosh, I wish she knew how much I wanted that to be the truth.

"See you at 5, then?"

"Of course dummy. Where else would I go? It's my house."

"Oh, yeah. Heh. Bye, then." I hung up before I could make a bigger fool of myself.

I put my phone back into the fanny pack and put the helmet on, and peeled back my left sleeve to see the stolen starktech smartwatch I had on. My heart rate had just spiked to the highest it's been all day, even during the fight with Diamondhead.

Wow. Just talking to Carrie is more stressful than being on fire. I guess that there is everything you need to know about being in love.


End file.
